A coding dojo story

It was 2008, and I was at the CITCON conference in Amsterdam. I’d only started going to conferences that year, and was feeling as intimidated as I was inspired by the depth of experience in the people I was meeting. It seemed like everyone at CITCON had written a book, their own mocking framework, or …

Thinking outside the shu box

I just got back from the fantastic Lean Agile Scotland conference, where I spoke about why agile fails. I’ve been doing a lot of travelling this year since The Cucumber Book came out, consulting and training different companies in BDD. A pattern I keep seeing are companies who adopted agile a few years ago but …

Seven Truths Exercise

Recently, I played a game with a team I was training which I called “Seven Truths of Test Automation”. I got each “truth” and wrote it on an index card and put it in a (blank) envelope. I got to the training room early and hid them around the room, not very well, so that …

XP Day 2008: Debugging Pair Programming

At XP Day 2008 I proposed an open-space session on pair programming. Specifically, I wanted to explore the reasons why programmers might not want to pair, or find it such an unpleasant experience that they’re put off doing it again. Judging by the great number of people who turned up and stayed for the session, …